LEBANON — Motivational speaker Brian Williams had two challenges for the students at Lebanon’s middle and high schools: Change the world in 15 days, and “spark a massive ripple effect of random acts of kindness” in their community.

And the children said Thursday that they’re up to the challenge, organized by students in Lyman Memorial High School’s Diversity Club and by Williams, founder of Think Kindness.

Based in Reno, Williams travels the country, enlisting schools in the kindness campaign. He told a story about traveling to Kenya to meet orphans as part of an act of kindness campaign that had produced 8,000 donated shoes, which Williams and team delivered to the children.

“One girl who was 9 had gone barefoot all her life,” he said. “These were her first shoes.”

The Kindness Challenge for Lebanon’s middle and high schools is to collect as many donated items as possible for care packages to be sent to servicemen and women overseas through the nonprofit organization Give 2 the Troops. Donation boxes will be in each homeroom.

“We’re such a small town, and we try to get everybody working together,” senior Kylene Sterling, 17, said. “We want to show we can do much more.”

They have 15 days, starting Monday, to accomplish their task, which Williams talked about at assemblies Thursday at both the middle and high schools.

“Our goal is to inspire them to do something big and different,” Williams said.

The aim is to encourage students and staff to spread kindness both within their schools and to extend it to include acts of kindness in their lives beyond school. There will be other kindness activities at both schools during the 15 days as well, hosted by various school clubs and groups.

And the “ripple effect” acts of kindness will be well-documented, with the help of technology.

More than 100 Kindness Cards will be placed at random underneath the desks of students for them to find at the appropriate time. Each card, similar to a grocery store rewards card, comes with a unique code that, when entered online, allows the user to tell their kindness story, see a Google map of everywhere in the world the card has been, read a list of every act of kindness that card has done and also use their Facebook account to track where it goes next.

“It might spread literally around the world,” Williams said.

In addition to competing with other schools across the nation for the title of kindest school, there’s a local rivalry between the middle and high schools, English teacher and school diversity coordinator Liza Escott said.

“The principal of whichever school places second in the donation drive has agreed to be wrapped in duct tape and have a pie thrown in his face,” she said.